If She Were Here
by Madaboutthementalist
Summary: Dreaming, Jane remembers.


FF_

**Author's note:** Many thanks to SpaceAnJL for beta reviewing this, my first Mentalist fanfic.

**Disclaimer:** I am a little girl at the edge of the sandbox, watching in awe (and humbly inspired) as Bruno Heller and his team create the wonderful sandcastle that is "The Mentalist."

If She Were Here

If she were here, she would watch him as he slept and, as she always had, somehow discern the meaning, if not the exact details, of his dreams. When they were particularly dark, she would wait until he woke with a start and hold him as she talked him out of the nightmares and back into the waking world.

If she were here, she would wake up earlier than he did but pretend to sleep, so he could get up quietly and "surprise" her with breakfast in bed. She would pass the time before he woke by watching him through almost-closed eyes, resisting the urge to reach out and stroke his hair (she couldn't get enough of it; he liked to joke she had a hair fetish).

If she were here, she'd be his Rock of Gibraltar, his anchor of truth and meaning in a superficial world, at the center of his universe making sure everything ran smoothly, yet somehow manage to take his breath away with carefully calculated impetuousness. One time she'd hired a sitter without telling him and picked him up from the studio. They'd gone to a drive-in and _not_ watched the double feature until almost two in the morning. He'd felt like a teenager again, barely managed to contain himself as he paid the sitter and said goodnight. They'd ended up on the couch, "shush"-ing each other when the sighs and moans got too loud, stifling giggles as they imagined their daughter coming downstairs and telling them sternly that it was very late even for grown-ups and that they should go to bed _right now._

If she were here, she would tease him about Lisbon, how the woman had somehow managed to land smack in the middle of his affections, in a place somewhere between long-suffering older sister, high school crush, trusted colleague and best friend. She'd laugh at his stories of his teammates' quirks (how Rigsby had started filling his black hole of a stomach with salad and veggies since Van Pelt joined the team, that they called Cho "Spock" behind his back, Lisbon's smirk the day she'd one-upped his birthday present of a pony with a puppy) and insist on having them all over for a barbecue for the Fourth of July weekend so she could meet them in person.

If she were here, she would observe with arched eyebrows how ironic it was that he, the atheist, the skeptic, the mocker of faith, carried a burden of guilt roughly the size and weight of the Vatican.

If she were here, she would remind him that she was no more a saint than he was, every bit as proud of her talent as he was of his, that like him she loved showing off, loved being the center of attention, basking in the warmth and applause of an audience after a performance. She'd point out that his dear departed had cheated on him not once but twice (never mind that the first time was when he stood her up for a friend's party and she'd ended up necking drunkenly with some guy whose name she couldn't remember later, or that the second time he'd been flirting outrageously, even for him, and she'd left with another man in a fit of temper to spite him). The important thing, she would tell him, was that they never lied to each other, not once, and that they forgave each other and moved on.

If she were here, she would fold her arms in the way he was familiar with, that meant she wanted to slap him silly, and tell him that kicking himself like this only made him a pain in his own ass as well as the world's. She would tell him to wake up and smell the Earl Grey, to quit spending his life looking over his shoulder, that while catching a serial murderer wasn't a bad reason to get out of bed in the morning, living for revenge was the flat-out stupidest thing she'd ever heard of.

"You always were honest to a fault," he says fondly towards her side of the bed in the hazy half-second between sleep and wakefulness, before he feels the absence of her one more time and stares blindly at the ceiling for a few moments.

Then he rolls over and buries his face in the pillow that should have been hers, shoulders shaking, crying silently so as not to waken the woman in the next room, who knows too much of his pain already.

Maybe later he'll remember what she would have said, but for now, he's devastated all over again that she's not only gone, but he's lost another piece of her.

He can no longer remember the smell of her hair.


End file.
